LINUXGAMES

Wurm Online is a Java-based MMORPG currently in a freebeta-testing phase. It’s community-focused, so the majority of items andlocations are player-created. There’s also a WurmPedia Wikiwith documentation and common bug solutions; additional info can be found atthe official forums.

Screenshots: [ View ]Download (Java Webstart): [ Wurm Online ]

If you like Grid Wars, you may also be interested in Kenta Cho’s retro shooters,which have been ported to Linux by Evil Mr.Henry:

• Gunroar
• Tumiki Fighters
• Torus Trooper
• Parsec47
• rRootage
• A7Xpg
• Noiz2sa

I saw this mentionedon Kotaku a while back: MarkIncitti has written a clone of Geometry Wars using theBlitzMaxprogramming language. Incitti’s version is built for Windows(although the source code is available, so you can fiddle with it on Linux ifyou have the BlitzMaxIDE), but one of his contributors, taumel, has ported his fork to Linux:GridWars 2.

Grid Wars 2 Download: [ 3DDownloads | marune.de ]

GarageGames has releasedThe Game Programmer’s Guideto Torque, which includes examples and documentation for the Torque Game Engine,which has grown out of the engine utilized in Tribes 2.

One note: the engineitself runs on Linux, and the product page for the book mentions Linux, butthere’s no mention of Linux demos on the included CD, so you may have to dosome extra work to get the examples running on your platform of choice.

Two updates from NintendoEntertainment System emulator projects:

• FakeNES 0.5.7 – OpenGL andsave state compatibility features implented.
• NESCafe 0.6.15 – a Java-based emulator; screenshot/animationfeatures have been added.

Thanks to LinuxEmu for the heads up.

Version 0.2 of OpenRTS, a cross-platform open source real-time strategy game, has been released. Changes and new features include:

• Improved network game support
• Improved animations
• Selection of multiple units
• Support for psyco just-in-time compolation
• Improved pathfinding
• Available in English, German and Norwegian.

Download: [ OpenRTS 0.2 ]

We received the following notice tonight:

The Italian Diamonds Team (tentative name), a team of non-professional developers assembled and externally supervised by Francesco Carucci, 3D Software Engineer at Lionhead Studios, in his spare time, is glad to announce its first videogame, named Diamond Crush, whose development is close to 50%.Diamond Crush is the outcome of the Diamonds Project, a free didactic project to teach on the field how a team of professionals actually works, which production steps a videogame has to pass and how such a project is brought to its end.

The whole project is non-profit making, and the game will be released this year totally for free, under open source Public Domain license. The official site URL is given next to the signature in this document, and further news and updates, together with a first playable version working as a pre-alpha, will be released later this month, in a date hinted on the game site itself.”

The Diamond Crush site (http://www.diamondcrush.net/) indicates the pre-alpha will be released on April 24^th.

Stendhal, a full-fledged multiplayer online adventure game developed using the Arianne system, has released a new version. Changes in this release include:

• Added a buddy system so you can keep in touch with your friends
• Blood pools as a result of fights,
• New area near Ados called the swamp.
• Removed some offending GFX,
• Removed hide admin commands
• Simplified Xin Blanca items list

Download: [ Stendhal 0.48 ]

The version 1.2 point release of Quake 4 has been released by id Software and Raven Software. This includes all the changes and new features present in the previously withdrawn v1.1 patch.

As always, the Linux Quake 4 FAQ page can be found @ http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/.

Download Quake 4 v1.2: [ 3D Downloads | id Torrent | Levitation | FileShack | FileFront ]

Phoronix has posted benchmarks for ATI’s latest driver release; the article compares X1000 cards to NVIDIA’s GeForce line.

id Software has released version 1.2of the Quake 4 SDK for moddevelopers. This will allow teams to make their projects compatible with theupcoming Q4 v1.2 patch.

id also maintains idDevNet, whichcontains documentation and tutorials for the Doom 3 and Quake 4 SDKs.

Download: [ Quake 4 1.2 SDK ]

Danger from the Deep 0.1.1, an open source WWII U-boat simulator, is now available.The game is planned as tactical simulation and will be as realistic as the developer’s time and knowledge of physics allows. The current state is alpha, but playable. Here be ye lengthy changelog:

• new SSE intrinsic code for x86/64 and x86/32
• new sky rendering
• new font and some gui changes
• display per torpedo info
• sensor detection code once per second, not once per frame, improves performance
• convoy fixes (position simulation)
• added mission editor
• added Kennebac class tanker
• fixed widget bugs
• more data per model (country etc.)
• fixed some models
• new panel (smaller), new message display (nicer)
• fixes for popups
• new popup: rangefinder card
• shader fixes
• new vessel preview
• added doxygen documentation
• improved model format (with relations)
• fixes for compatibility with newer drivers and OpenGL2.0
• improved water rendering (mirror distortion effect)
• TDC improvements
• Parallax angle computation and display
• new faulthandler for debugging segfaults
• load/save format changed to xml based data
• better perlin noise generation
• new sounds and music
• new background images for menus

There’s support for multiple languages but currently only English, Italian and German are implemented. The developers are also looking for additional contributers; you can read how to help the project here.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ Danger from the Deep 0.1.1 ]

We’ve received a release announcement for Xj3D version 1.0:

Xj3D is an open source X3D browser, developer library and test environment for the X3D real time 3D content and delivery standard. A principal goal of Xj3D is conformance to the X3D spec while still maintaining high performance using OpenGL hardware acceleration. The milestone 1.0 release is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris. It implements CADGeometry, DIS, GeoSpatial, H-Anim, as well as extensions for Rigid Body Physics, Particle Systems, Clipping planes, Picking Utilities, Abstract Device IO. This release lets Linux users explore any VRML or X3D model, as well as incorporate the technologies into their own applications.

Developer documentation is also available.

Download: [ Xj3D 1.0 ]

Build 16 of Paintball 2.0,a paintball-themed multiplayer shooter based on the Quake 2 engine,was released recently; there’s also invalid instruction fix for the Linux version:

If you get an error along the lines of “Invalid Instruction” when trying torun the Linux version of Paintball 2 Build 16, it probably means your CPUdoesn’t support SSE instructions. I’ve created a small patch that disablesSSE optimizations. You can grab it on thefiles page. Do not use this patchunless your CPU doesn’t support SSE. It will cause slight prediction errorsdue to variations in the floating point calculations resulting in laggygameplay.

Build 16 itself has new player models, reflective water, and global banlist support.

Screenshots: [ View ]Download: [ Paintball 2.0Build 16 ]

TransGaming Technologies issued a pressrelease a few weeks back to announce a partnership with Mandriva’s Polish partner, Amazis.net. Under the agreement, Amazis.netwill offer Polish Linux gamers the full version of Cedega with the PowerPack 2006 Linuxdistribution.

Following up is version 8.40 of the professional flight simulator X-Plane with probably the longest beta test to date. The installer fetches a demo which lacks the Global Scenery graphics as always if the full version is not installed.
Some of the improvements are:

• New option for retractable wings.
• New battery/solar-power options.
• User-controllable spring and damping constants for the landing gear.
• New EFIS elements.
• The navaids in X-Plane can now be edited in the MAP screen.
• Hot and hung starts in the engine failure screen. w00t!
• You can easily grab and launch the latest installer from the “About:Current and Latest Version” menu selection.
• Now you start again at the airport where you landed last or crashed nearby.
• Seatbelt and gear switches make the little bing-sound. :-)
• The weather presets in the set weather screen now can set the clouds as well as the visibility.
• New flying car design in the “Austin’s Designs” folder.
• Citing Austin “more Power” Meyers: “The “drop anchor” function on the seaplanes where you drop anchor by hitting (OR LEAVING ON) the brakes is now GONE. Nobody understood it. Everybody kept dropping anchor and then wondering why they could not move their seaplanes, and the planes pulled to the side as if… as if… AS IF THEY WERE DRAGGING AN ANCHOR FROM THE NOSE! This feature was nothing but trouble. It’s now GONE.”
• “SAVE button in the file saving dialog, in case you do not guess that you can save by hitting enter.” All in all more idiot proof.
• Some bugfixes and other improvements.

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ X-Plane 8.40 ]

Version 0.9.10 of the open-source flight simulator FlightGear has been released.
Some of the more important items from the ChangeLog are:

• Many improvements to the multi-player mode. Other airplanes are now updated smoothly. There is a really nifty google maps based moving map that anyone can use to track all online activity.
• Include the ability to send ATC and AI aircraft communication to a local festival server to be converted to spoken speech output.
• Added a detailed model of the Honeywell MK VIII EGPWS ground proximity warning system.
• Updated/improved rain cone rendering.
• Complete overhaul/redo of terrain textures based on USGS satellite imagery.
• Updated airport and navaid data.
• Updated manual.
• Upgraded to JSBSim v2.0
• Much work and progress with carrier interaction and launch/recovery modeling.
• Add a feature that allows the end user to click any where on the terrain. The system will compute a ground intersection and report back the lon, lat, and elevation of the click point. The click point is reported in the property system so it can be read by just about anything including external programs. Later we added the ability to place an object at the click point as well.
• Add a feature to play one-off wav files. These are qeued and played sequentially. This was then leveraged to build an ATC background chatter module in nasal that can be turned on/off at run time. This could also be leveraged for tutorials or other interactive type scripts to play prerecorded messages at specific times or under specific conditions.
• Allow clock to report local time as well as universal.
• Allow enabling/disabling of menu entries.
• Add a save-on-exit option to save user preferences.
• Added a new Nasal/XML based tutorial system.
• Various bugfixes.
• Added a detailed model of the Honeywell MK VIII EGPWS ground proximity warning system.
• Add a model of a KLN89 GPS.
• Allow nav radios to be slaved to the gps.
• Updated aircraft: A4/A3F (cleanups and updates, functional drag chute), A-10 (3d cockpit, fdm tuning, munitions, drop tanks), AN-225 (fdm tuning), B1900D, BO105 Eurocopter (new livry/logo options.), B-29, B-52F (major overhaul), Boeing 314 (3d cockpit, fdm updates), 747 (modeling fixes), Cirrus SR20 (improve interior a bit), C172 (added KLN89 gps), C310 (many modeling updates), Citation Bravo (many modeling updates, Primus 1000 PFD), Concorde (updated to v2.1, new views, sounds autopilot, fdm updates, new systems), DHC2 Beaver, F-16 (modeling and munitions updates), Hurricane, Hunter, MiG-15bis (adds some 3d cockpit instruments), PC7 (various cleanups), Seafire/Spitfire, Seahawk (general tidy up, cannon, heat haze, catapault launch strop), T37 (geometry, sound, fdm updates), YF-23 (misc model updates)
• New aircraft available: Boeing 707, 737-300 (Brand new version), Canberra BI8, English Electric Lightning (F.1A), Lockheed 1049 Constellation, Lockheed F-80C Shooting Star, Messerschmitt Bf 109, Ogel (a for-fun fantasy airplane.), New OV-10 with Clickable 3D cockpit, Piper PA24-250 Comanche 250 (N7764P), Piper Aerostar 700

Screenshots: [ View ] Download: [ FlightGear 0.9.10 ]

Version 0.105 of xmame/xmess has been released.These are ports of MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and MESS, the Multi Emulator Super System respectively. Changes:

• Everything from MAME 0.105 andMESS 0.105
• Fixed “-frames_to_run/-ftr” so that it works the same as on Windows.
• Fixed a memory leak in the plugin manager shutdown found by Valgrind. Bugzilla bug 850.
• The output of “-listroms (-lr)” now shows the correct driver name when it’s run for all ROMs.
• - Fixed a potential buffer overflow in the standard joystick driver. Bugzill bug 821. (Pierre Riteau)
• In fullscreen mode, the display no longer appears underneath other windows when the window manager is Metacity 2.14.x. However, there’s still a problem with keystrokes not being received, but you can use “-grabkeyboard (-gkb)” or left-ctrl + end as a workaround.

Download: [ xmame/xmess 0.105 ]

Name/Version: Kamikaze 0.2.2
Summary: Similar to old games like Bomberman or Dynablaster, Kamikaze provides a lot of action: Your task is to position bombs so that your enemies are hit, while you better stay out of their range. Lots of items can be found when blasting away obstacles.
Screenshots [ View ] Download [ Kamikaze 0.2.2 ]

Name/Version: Pioneers 0.9.61
Summary: Pioneers is a faithful GNOME 2 translation of the board game “Settlers of Catan”, with server-client multiplayer, AI players, and support for the changes made in the Seafarers of Catan expansion to the original board game.
Screenshots [ View ] Download [ Pioneers 0.9.61 ]

Name/Version: PyScrabble 1.3.2
Summary: PyScrabble is an online, multiplayer Scrabble game.
Screenshots [ View ] Download [ PyScrabble 1.3.2 ]

Name/Version: Python Kye 8.1
Summary: Kye is an unusual little puzzle game, with a variety of different types of objects. It takes a little time to figure out all the objects and their normal behaviour.
Screenshots [ View ] Download [ Python Kye 8.1 ]

Name/Version: Spakes 0.7.3
Summary: Spakes is a clone of the famous “Snakes” game. It is client/server-based and can be played over the Internet by up to 4 players
Screenshots [ View ] Download [ Spakes 0.7.3 ]

Name/Version: TappyTux 2.1.2
Summary: TappyTux is a children’s educational game suite, created originally for a project by SchoolNet Namibia.
Download [ TappyTux 2.1.2 ]

Sillysoft Games has announced therelease of American HistoryLux:

Take yourself on a campaign through the wars that haveshapedAmerican history, starting with the French and Indian War up till therecent Iraq War, with everything in between.

There’s a free demo; the full version can be purchased online. It’s also notedthat anyone affiliated with a school is encouraged to get in touch withSillysoft for more information about a site license.

AHL, as the name implies, is similar to Sillysoft’s previous Java-based strategy game, Lux.

Download: [ American History Lux Demo ]